Houston Ballet says hello to Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo

Updated 5:30 am, Sunday, May 22, 2011

Holly Hynes designed the costumes for Jorma Elo's One/end/One, which are being created in Houston Ballet's large new wardrobe shop. The ballet premieres Thursday at the Wortham Theater Center.

Holly Hynes designed the costumes for Jorma Elo's One/end/One, which are being created in Houston Ballet's large new wardrobe shop. The ballet premieres Thursday at the Wortham Theater Center.

Photo: Leonel Nerio : Art Institute Of Houston

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Jorma Elo's ballets often put hard-edged twists on classical movement, as seen in this image of dancers Kathleen Breen Combes, left, and Whitney Jensen of the Boston Ballet.

Jorma Elo's ballets often put hard-edged twists on classical movement, as seen in this image of dancers Kathleen Breen Combes, left, and Whitney Jensen of the Boston Ballet.

Photo: Gene Schiavone: Boston Ballet

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Finnish-born choreographer Jorma Elo

Finnish-born choreographer Jorma Elo

Photo: Eric Antoniou

Houston Ballet says hello to Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo

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Jorma Elo loves tutus and classical music, but what he does with them can make your head spin. It's not just that bodies jut at odd angles unexpectedly or limbs shiver like quicksilver. A unique dynamic emerges in the fast pacing, along with a dark sense of humanity.

That's made Elo, a native of Finland, one of the ballet world's hottest talents in pretty short order.

Houston Ballet unveils his new One/end/One on Thursday's Raising the Barre program. The American premiere of Christopher Bruce's Grinning in Your Face(to blues music by Martin Simpson and set in the Great Depression) and the company premiere of Christopher Wheeldon's Rush(a high-velocity abstract ballet set to Bohuslav Martinu'sSinfonietta La Jolla) are also on the program. All three are highly anticipated, as artistic director Stanton Welch continues to build up the company's contemporary repertoire.

Because they perform so many works by contemporary European masters like Jirí Kylián, Mats Ek, Ohad Naharin, Hans van Manen and William Forsythe, NDT dancers have edgy movement in their bones. Choreographers everywhere emulate them, but few manage not to mimic the masters' steps.

"I'm just happy to have been able to transfer from being a dancer to being a choreographer," Elo said recently. "The last years of my dancing I was doing quite a lot of both."

Still trim and muscular, he was headed to Memorial Park to play tennis. He tries to play three times a week. "I like to move," he said.

He likes working with American dancers, he said, because they're a little hungrier creatively than dancers in other countries. "In Europe, you have lifetime contracts; you work until you're 41 or 43, then you have retirement. That stability can be misleading; you live in a different reality," he said.

His arrival in the United States appears well-timed. Looming budget deficits in Europe will soon impact its many state-supported arts organizations. Last month in Amsterdam, Dutch National Ballet's managing director Ted Brandsen told me he expects a 40 percent funding cut next year that will mean fewer dancers, fewer new works and less touring.

Not that Elo's passport is gathering dust. His commissions this year include new pieces for the Scottish, Moscow Stanislavsky and Finnish National ballets.

Perhaps he's been successful, Elo ventured, because his dances exude an of-the-moment sensibility derived from the way he works. "Sometimes it starts with a story or an image, but it's more about trying to connect the music with the dancers at that moment, in the studio," he said.

Aside from the Houston company's skill, he appreciates its depth, which he thinks springs from its narrative ballet chops. "There's an element of humanity in the dancers, and sometimes with other companies it's harder to have that," Elo said.

Holly Hynes, collaborating with him for the fourth time, designed the costumes, including slick black tutus with gold trim.

Would Elo describe his dances as punk ballet?

"That sounds cool," he said, "but I hope it's something that engages the audience and takes them on a ride for 25 minutes."

Because One/end/One was created through the Joyce Theater Foundation's first Rudolf Nureyev Prize for New Dance (a $25,000 grant), Houston Ballet will take it on tour to New York Oct. 11-16. The prize was created to develop new works for the Joyce's intimate space by large American companies who don't often visit the nation's dance capital. Welch has called the opportunity a "debut season."

That, too, represents a raising of the barre for the company, which hasn't performed in Manhattan since 1985.